UFO Reporting for the 21st Century!

Sounds like a wonderful idea, and I certainly would take advantage of it.

Perhaps with ties back to the UFO forum here on ATS?

Hey, maybe ATS could get a mobile app? (just thinking out loud!) .

If you build anything and need a beta tester, I've got iPod touch 4th gen and an iPad 2!

By the way, in Japan mobile phones are buzzed a second or so before an earthquake of magnitude 5 or greater, and there is an option to receive warnings for quakes of lower magnitudes. Anyway, that's how I envision any such UFO notification system to work, except that it would only be for people who asked to be buzzed, and one could expect quite a few "Wolf!" criers. The point is that if there is something of interest in the sky, one wants to be notified before it gets away. And reporting, by an observer, as I mentioned already in this thread, has to be extremely easy or it probably won't happen in a genuine sighting.

Earthquake Early Warning (Japan)

Blooming Brilliant Idea!!

I'd have it! for Blackberry, I'll have you know aha

There are many quiet believers, seers, UFO hunters a sky watchers out there that would love this!!

Just look at UK-UFO website to see there's millions all over the country!!

Some one spots a UFO, ALERT IT!! somebody on the other side of the hill might have a better view, but would only look if you "alerted it!"

It could be revolutionary!

Do make it work!!

it is a great idea ... When I got my android i was looking for such an app ... and I would pay for it too ... I like the idea of notification specially if you are in the same area where something is happening ... I am not a programmer but a good program tester I would help in testing the program on my phone and give you some feedback ...

reply to post by badcon


Great IDEA!!! IF you know how to do this INTERFACE the INFORMATION!!! The only problem all the individual re-searchers have spent life times on gaining their knowledge and may not want to share! Im thinking Combine UFO reports with Alien Abductions and Crop Circles etc..and compare data and see if their are any patterns?? My interest are all the missing persons we have in this world. I think around 50 percent may come from Alien Abductions..Nome, Alaska is a great place to start!! MUFON is also a great group of guys whom may work with you!!

reply to post by badcon


Northwest UFO's Has the best organized information, and I like MUFON UFO MAP..but they have changed the format and its not as good. Think Crime mapping UFO'S compare with reported abductions and we may be able to catch a few!! I am not computer savy!! GO for IT!! Create whatever you are thinking of!!

Originally posted by stiver
I like the idea but because I don't have an iPhone or similar mobile device, I wouldn't be able to enjoy such app.

Definitely. I'm thinking there will be a website that will be entirely usable for non-space phone people. I'm not sure about submitting via the site right off the bat (smart phones have this amazing ability to capture a photo and within 15 seconds it can be online for others to see) but I'm not against allowing people to add followup images, etc.

Originally posted by stiver
Also, is it possible to include a few basic tools that can be helpful in many cases, like EMF meter, thermometer, a kind of real time satellite tracking map like this one www.n2yo.com... star maps etc. Such tools can help identify the objects before waking up the neighborhood to each iridium flair and take the UFO sighting to another, a bit more sophisticated level.

Absolutely. I wouldn't be at all against using the devices internal sensors to upload information from the accelerometer / gyroscopic sensors to the system at the time of the sighting. This was sort of my initial thought with this system is that since we'll have the longitude & latitude of the mobile device user when the sighting happens we'll be able to quickly notify people in their vicinity. We could even upload some ambient lighting info or dB information. I would love to allow video & sound clip submission.

Originally posted by stiver
About the pranks - I'm not sure a rating system will save us from the hoaxes. Some of the highest rated videos on You Tube are obvious hoaxes. If you could integrate a lie detector somehow, that would be another thing, but this has to wait for the 22nd century UFO reporting app.

I think you are right however I'm thinking eventually we could come up with some moderators [read: cia operatives] who could confirm a post isn't a hoax before it ever gets submitted to MUFON. I think since MUFON isn't concerned about real-time tracking of events we could upload even a week after and they would be happy. No reason to rush every report to them and flood their servers with garbage.

Originally posted by abeverage
So are you planning to keep a database of sightings then?

Most likely. I maintain databases of hundreds of millions of rows. This app would have to be hugely popular for it to cause a drag on my servers and having old submissions could help when we're doing analysis about what constitutes a REAL UFO sighting vs a hoax (holy crap think of the infographics!). Also we can build up reputation within the app so users who have submitted a bunch of crap might not send a push notification to anyone while people who take photos when they see something truly out of this world would send a push notification to anyone in an even wider radius.

Originally posted by The GUT
If you created a killer app with uniques features and you were approached by some spooky sorts who gave you a Red, White, and Blue speech, would you cooperate with them hush-hush?

My battle plan would be this: backdoor access for all. I would setup the service to have an open REST API where anyone could export the database of all the sightings. Additionally I'd have data exports from the database monthly that anyone could get. Mr Red White & Blue wants a backdoor? Give him a link to the livefeed, REST API & database exports.

Originally posted by xpoq47
The camera-control software I’m working on is specialized in detecting any large hovering object in daylight and adjusting the aim of three cameras in the vicinity of a traditional UFO hotspot, and one feature I’ve been hoping to have is an alert sent free of charge to cell phones in the area of people who have requested alerts. The program can’t identify a target. It just rotates the cameras, zooms them, and starts them shooting. Then it’s up to humans to judge. This system will be activated by helicopters and large balloons, and there are a lot of hot-air balloons in New Mexico.

Wow... With your not working on a mobile app and this I think we could work very well together. I'd have no idea how to develop that kind of camera control software but kudos to you! Sounds like an awesome idea. I'd be happy to provide API access via an OAuth token to you or work with you to allow your software to interface with the site.

Also I definitely plan to pull local weather and atmospheric conditions but I don't know if that would be means to throw anything out since atmospheric conditions sometimes attract sightings. Essentially I'd like the app to start and be right at the photo screen (optional) and you can take a photo / video immediately which would (1) notify anyone nearby there is a sighting and (2) upload the photo for them to see.

Originally posted by Quaesitor
If anything that gets reported alerts people you could get a hoaxer/prankster making stuff up and people getting constantly bombarded with fake reports, and if you wait until there's a certain number of "likes" until an event gets reported it might be too late for anyone else in the area to do anything about it.

How can this problem be resolved?

Well one bright side is that hoaxers would essentially be allotted one hoax per device as I will get the device's UUID and register it with the sighting (actually I may anonymize this but leave a rating per post). So if someone creates a successful hoax it'll be the only one they create on that device. This might seem like an unfortunate solution but I don't see it as being any less useful than current implementation.

Originally posted by OptimusSubprime
Cool idea, but it would be abused and turn into another medium where people have to sift through all of the garbage to find one or two gems. MAybe if there was a man in the middle, so to speak, that filters out all of the garbage people submit,, and only pushes through legitimate stuff.

I'm thinking eventually moderators would come forth (these would be people who would stand out in the crowd as far as standing outside the crowd / with the crowd but being right most of the time). I also hope that eventually the system could learn what is and is not garbage quite quickly (at least before everyone abandons the app because of all the notifications).

Originally posted by ctdannyd
Perhaps with ties back to the UFO forum here on ATS?
Hey, maybe ATS could get a mobile app? (just thinking out loud!) .

Well linking to the setup would be great and the app will definitely have ATS in the special thanks on the site and the app. We wouldn't of imagined this app without ATS.

Also if ATS is looking for an app... I make those. All you have to do is ask.

Originally posted by ctdannyd
If you build anything and need a beta tester, I've got iPod touch 4th gen and an iPad 2!

edit on 8/30/2012 by ctdannyd because: (no reason given)

You've got it. I'll definitely make it iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad compatible so you hit two of those.

Originally posted by xpoq47
Earthquake Early Warning (Japan)

Exactly. But for unofficially reported UFO sightings.

Originally posted by Sinny
Blooming Brilliant Idea!!

Thanks! But I'm obviously not the first, hopefully I'll be the most ambitious though!

Originally posted by Sinny
I'd have it! for Blackberry, I'll have you know

aha

This might take longer than the other platforms but once we demonstrate that people like it and will use it Blackberry is at the top of my list. I'd love for it to be higher but their development toolkit isn't the best.

Originally posted by Sinny
There are many quiet believers, seers, UFO hunters a sky watchers out there that would love this!!

Oh that's a note. Anonymous reports would be the default and and the linking would be one-way so if you are a bad reporter everyone would know but if you were just anonymous no one would know who you were. Of course if you want a name and an avatar we could eventually support that as well.

Originally posted by Ayman13
it is a great idea ... When I got my android i was looking for such an app ... and I would pay for it too ... I like the idea of notification specially if you are in the same area where something is happening ... I am not a programmer but a good program tester I would help in testing the program on my phone and give you some feedback ...

You're on the testers list now! Also there will be a special donation section for people like you who would pay for it. Thanks!

***PHEW***

Think I responded to everyone! Thanks so much for the encouragement. Something WILL come of this!

Originally posted by badcon
I'm a software engineer primarily writing mobile applications now (iPhone / Android) and I was looking around earlier realizing that there with all of this technology there is no UFO alert system and many times ATSers could be sitting inside on their computer while above their heads something interesting is going on. I'd like to help the community create a tool to get more eyes on the sky when they need to be. Imagine if someone in your area spots something strange you can get a push notification on your iPhone or Android phone and walk right outside and maybe capture a better photo than they were able to. Also the app could automatically submit reports to mufon or any other sources out there but essentially it could build a "thread" of sorts about a single sighting. ...

3.) Has someone already made something like this and I'm just not aware?

Hi bacon,

Are you familiar with MUFON's app project, "UFO Connect" which seems to have (or had, when it was announced last year) largely the same aims as your outline?

See the following thread on ATS:
MUFON: Signs of intelligent life detected and a "game-changing" (?) project

That thread includes the following video, which gives an overview of this project:


I think the app idea is interesting and would not wish to discourage you at all - but thought it best to make sure you are aware that a team associated with MUFON seems to have been working on such an app for over a year already. (As some of you know, reinvention of the wheel within ufology is one of my pet hates!). I have contact details somewhere for some of those involved in the MUFON team if you wish to contact them to see how much progress MUFON has made at this time and you could then determine whether you are better off starting a project of your own, or joining the MUFON project or simply awaiting some release from MUFON.

All the best,

Isaac

Originally posted by IsaacKoi
I think the app idea is interesting and would not wish to discourage you at all - but thought it best to make sure you are aware that a team had MUFON seems to have been working on such an app for over a year already. (As some of you know, reinvention of the wheel within ufology is one of my pet hates!). I have contact details somewhere for some of those involved in the MUFON team if you wish to contact them to see how much progress MUFON has made at this time and you could then determine whether you are better off starting a project of your own, or joining the MUFON project or simply awaiting some release from MUFON.

Thanks for letting me know. Sending U2U.

reply to post by badcon


Seems like a smashing idea, although I am not sure where all the information would be sent to. Are you offering so set up a server too, or send everything to MUFON or some such organization, assuming they have the hardware for the data aggregation? I assume it would be possible to include a google maps/earth tie-in feature to show the locations of sitings.

People are mention that there are other such apps "in th works", but the fact that they aren't out yet suggests that they are languishing projects. By all means check with MUFON or any other organization or person who is supposedly working on such a project, but if you have the wherewithal to do it, I wouldn't be put off by the fact that others are attempting to do it; you might be more tech savvy than others attempting to do the same. In any case, aren't there multiple apps for various purposes already? It doesn't hurt to have redundancy, and it should help to improve future versions of any such apps.

Make it so.

Originally posted by MrInquisitive
reply to post by badcon

 

Seems like a smashing idea, although I am not sure where all the information would be sent to. Are you offering so set up a server too, or send everything to MUFON or some such organization, assuming they have the hardware for the data aggregation? I assume it would be possible to include a google maps/earth tie-in feature to show the locations of sitings.

Seems like it would give your little software/app biz a little notoriety, which, of course, would be a good thing for you.

Make it so.

I have 3 servers right now. I'm sure I can find space.

Notoriety is cool but that's not the goal. I don't want or need that. If I'm being honest what I really want is to know when there is a UFO above my head and I don't know. I've seen two things in my life I'd qualify as UFOs but I wish I'd of known every time one was flying over my head, I'd probably of experienced many many more.

This is an excellent idea. I didn't google for it, but are you guys sure there isn't something similar out there already ? What about the MUFON app project someone mentioned. Did it go down the gutter ?

And of course the application needs a database driven back-end which does collect and distribute the information in a centralized way. I'm a database developer ( preferably MySQL ) and I'm willing to assist if needed. I'm also quite versed in PHP and some other languages such as Ruby / Python but I lack any experience designing interfaces that interact with mobile apps, and that would be quite interesting to look into from my perspective.

Just holler at me if needed.

On a side note: I'm about to start developing some sort of database that does import certain data and statistics on a day to day basis from multiple sources in order to allow for statistical analysis of possibly interconnected events. For example: It does store earthquake data, which can easily be imported through files provided by the USGS and it also imports other seemingly unrelated events, such as coronal mass ejections .. flares .. the ionospheric delay values for certain regions etc .. and then you start to look for statistical anomalies that might indicate a relation between these events. That just also came to my mind when reading this.

Originally posted by badcon

Originally posted by MrInquisitive
reply to post by badcon

 

Seems like a smashing idea, although I am not sure where all the information would be sent to. Are you offering so set up a server too, or send everything to MUFON or some such organization, assuming they have the hardware for the data aggregation? I assume it would be possible to include a google maps/earth tie-in feature to show the locations of sitings.

Seems like it would give your little software/app biz a little notoriety, which, of course, would be a good thing for you.

Make it so.

I have 3 servers right now. I'm sure I can find space.

Notoriety is cool but that's not the goal. I don't want or need that. If I'm being honest what I really want is to know when there is a UFO above my head and I don't know. I've seen two things in my life I'd qualify as UFOs but I wish I'd of known every time one was flying over my head, I'd probably of experienced many many more.

I didn't mean anything negative by the notoriety comment, but went back and removed it, because I thought it might be misconstrued. You obviously replied to me before I did so. In any case, my original point wasn't meant to be negative, but just to mention a bonus to your developing such an app.

Sounds like you have the resources and capability, so definitely go for it for the reasons you cite.

Since you replied before my edit, I'll ask again: do you envision some sort of geographic visualization, like a tie-in to Google Earth/maps? I think this would be a key feature.

Hi Badcon, (note: I sent this as a U2U with my contact information)

I was pleasantly surprised to read your thread this morning. You are the first person in nearly five years of me thinking about and working on a similar project to "get" what it takes to modernize ufology. I've been working on and off, on what you're describing since late 2009. When I first started out I did basically what you're doing. I wrote about it on ATS. Unfortunately since I was working full time for Electronic Arts as a software engineer. I didn't have a lot of spare time. So my hope was that someone else would pick up the ball and run with it. However after about five months. I realized no one was going to put in the effort. So I got in touch with MUFON. They loved the idea and I started helping them with the website, their case management system (CMS), UFO stalker, and some other smaller projects.

Even though I enjoyed working with them for what was a little over a year. I began to realize MUFON's objective wasn't to find UFOs, but rather alien space crafts. In our meetings I would often interject the possibility of new novel military designs or atmospheric phenomena and it just would get brushed under the rug. The truth of the matter is that MUFON wants to be a sort of Near-Earth SETI. Problem is we already have technology (GEODSS / Air Force Space Surveillance System) to locate unidentified crafts. And there are more scientifically rigorous methods for trying to contact alien intelligence (SETI Institute).

So, when I tried to explain to them that the technology I was developing should be focused on locating and understanding "transients" of all varieties. It's no surprise that they weren't particularly interested because they only wanted to find one thing. Little green men.

I think this is why Philip Klass once said, "No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse."

So, despite trying to get everyone on the same page. Because I really wanted to continue to work with them. I decided if I was ever going to get serious recognition for what I was doing I'd have to brave it alone. That's when I started to talk with Seth Shostak (senior astronomer at the SETI Institute) and a couple of other people who possessed a rigorous scholarly mindset and the needed academic connections. They loved the idea and offered to endorse the project.

Below is an excerpt of the original email I sent out to Seth Shostak,

To give some background I'm a game programmer. I've worked at Microsoft Game Studios (on Age of Empires 3, Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends, several Xbox 360 launch titles, and on Xbox Live). I've also spent a couple years working for Electronic Arts.

My current area of interest is computational and distributed tracking of unidentified transient objects (UTOs) using widely available technology (i.e. GPS-enabled camera phones /w accelerometers). Now I know you have a fairly middle-of-the-road UFO/UAP position, but before you close the email please allow me to at least put forward my definition of UFO!

When I say UFO I don't imply Dr. Hartman's definition (the stimulus for a report made by one or more individuals of something seen in the sky ... which the observer could not identify as having an ordinary natural origin, and which seemed to him sufficiently puzzling that he undertook to make a report of it), nor Dr. Hynek's definition (a UFO is a report the contents of which are puzzling not only to the observer but to others who have the technical training the observer may lack), nor do I imply the ET hypothesis or alien spacecrafts. Rather when I say UFO I define it to mean "a process to identify an unidentified aerial sighting."

More specifically I see 'UFO' as a series of steps starting first with the observation, followed by the post-analysis (or confirmation of the sighting – with the potential for it to reach a "true" unknown status), the hypothesis, and the eventual identification of the unknown. When I use the word 'UFO' I attempt to qualify it with a descriptor to explain which of the stages it is I'm describing.



That said, I believe I have a very good mechanism to get to the bottom of peoples sightings.

I've been developing a protocol, and an iPhone application that identifies objects in the sky. My pet name for the project is Beeblebrox. The idea in a nutshell is to have the program hook the FAAs database of civilian aircrafts, use azimuth and elevation of the phone (using the accelerometer transposed from the horizon to the object) to determine low magnitude stars / planets, for it to do basic image processing to identify birds, etc.; and if the application can't identify the object it would notify other users within a 5 to 10 mile distance of the observers location. The people who receive the broadcast, as new onlookers, would then take additional footage and go through the same steps. After it's passed a certain barometer of truthfulness it would stage in other observational equipment, perhaps including something like civilian radar.

What this does, using the iPhone locations services to notify other users within a certain radius of a persons sighting, is it distributes the workload of recording numerous angles of independently corroborating photographic data and also reduces the time necessary to rapidly deploy other people with additional sensory equipment to the location.

Not only would this software package increase public awareness, it maximizes the number of people recording data (more first-hand reports); it decreases the lag between a sighting and the time it takes experts with equipment to analyze the event; and gives investigative reporters access to up-to-the-second sightings which may have the happy side-effect of a professional camera crew recording a `true' UFO live, up-close and personal.

All that said, it's one thing to make a small tool that does automatic identification of airplanes, weather balloons, low magnitude planet / star identification, and notifies other human beings in the area of the sighting as described above. It's another to hook it up so as it progresses through the on-device automated identification, it not only notifies humans, it distributes observational parameters to remote peripherals; which would then have to be followed up by an in-depth analysis. With decent image processing software / audio decomposition / overlaying other data this part of the platform could probably automate ~50-60% of the harder identifications. To decrease CPU load it would be best to break it up in to distributable tasks using BOINC. That still leaves ~40-50% that's manual. This also has to be distributed in an efficient manner. My best solution is mimicking Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

With a fully realized system identifications could probably happen within 30-60 minutes. Anything outside of that would be a genuine unknown.

I doubt I need to tell you that a project like this is incredibly complex and extremely time consuming. I can't even begin to fathom tackling something like this entirely on my own. What I'm looking for are ways to improve or simplify the idea, to get basic man-power to help with its development (would any academic research institutions be interested?), and how best to approach potential donors (who?) to generate funding to purchase more hardware to test backwards compatibility and work on features like computing object triangulation, angular size, and elevation.

After that initial contact, what I explained to Seth and the others is that UFO studies (or UTO -- Unidentified Transient Objects) could be better organized under the subheading of "Science and Intelligence Gathering in Pursuit of the Search for New Objects." Or shortened, SIGSNO or CSIGSNO. Where the 'C' stands for "Crowdsourced." To give the project some visibility I threw together a really simple website. So be aware if you check out the site, I didn't want to waste the time and resources making it pretty. I just wanted people to begin to understand why the UTO topic is so important.

To try to summarize the big idea, basically all usable human knowledge up to this point has been gained through scientific study of "semi-permanent" phenomena. Want to know more about subatomic particles? Well just slam them together in a particle collider. Want to know more about frogs? Collect a bunch of them and gut 'em. Want to know more about "Transient Luminous Events" (TLEs)? Well, good luck!

The problem is that all things are impermanent in the long-run.

Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss has repeatedly tried to make the point that if modern humans had come into existence four billion years from now. We wouldn't be able to prove the truth of the expansion of the universe because all lights from other galaxies would be so far away that the sky would be almost completely black. Meaning we could never perform the tests that confirmed the big bang. This suggests there's a horizon for information. After a certain point if you don't collect the data you need it's gone forever. Following that, using the best science available, you'll be doomed to know at best 1900-level cosmology. And you'll be wrong about how the universe works. Sad as it may be. This isn't the fault of the scientific method, but rather of our incomplete information.

This highlights the importance of transient phenomena. And it can be seen in every important area of science today. Look at climate science and the desperation right now to try and collect transient core samples from quickly diminishing ice caps. Or the push in astronomy to try to crowdsource observing the sky to help locate astronomic objects and to isolate and locate possible ETI signals.

Things come and go. If we don't have a network in place to record all transients as they happen. The human species may irrevocably lose important information that we'll never have access to again. What I'm proposing is the shift of science from studying "semi-permanent" phenomena to studying "transient" phenomena because over a long enough time-frame all phenomena are transient in nature. The sooner we have an application to utilize all people as nodes in a grid. The sooner we can begin to pick up what's out of the ordinary (like SCP 06F6, Hanny's Voorwerp, and Atmospheric Ghost Lights).

If you'd like to talk more and maybe work together.

I can be reached at (see U2U)

Or on IM at:

(see U2U)

I think would it actually be worthwhile to talk on the phone if you're seriously interested in working on the project.

Let me know!

-Xt

reply to post by badcon


Your idea seems great, but to notify everyone, it will require everyone to have the same operating system (for instance: Android/iOS/Symbian/wp7) unless you make it cross-platform. So I suggest you build your app using java code, first build an android app (I'll be glad to test it ), and then move to other platforms. Good luck with your app!!

reply to post by Xtraeme


Xtraeme you beat me to it! Badcon, you MUST include this functionality, then I could see this app being a hit. FAA integration to rule out planes would make this a revolutionary way of recording ufos. Maybe even as a paid upgrade. Also if you could include a variety of photo filters to keep the origional, and a high contrast version, a sharpened version, black and white, etc. Even (dreaded) social network integration just to increase popularity and help people post images. A digital zoom feature suited for a UFO scenario may be very useful as well. I really see the promise in this idea, not a bad one at all.

I am currently a student, but I have taken many courses in mobile development and I would be glad to help if I could help. Im good with xcode/objective C and java. PM me if you want to include me I would be glad to at least help you test it.

Excellent idea, I am in a hurry right now, but will keep looking in to see how this develops, and help if I can.